French archaeologist François Dessy has made significant progress in deciphering Linear Elamite, one of the last unbroken writing systems in the ancient Near East.
Additional artifacts have allowed the world to decipher dozens of inscriptions that had remained a mystery for more than a century.
The Elamite script consists of 77 geometric symbols and was used during the Bronze Age in what is now southwestern Iran. The earliest examples were discovered in 1903 during excavations at the ancient city of Susa, but the limited number of known texts hindered decipherment for a long time.
The situation changed after obtaining ten inscriptions engraved on ancient silver vessels from a private collection, as studying them contributed to revealing recurring sequences of signs.
The names of rulers known from other written sources became a key to deciphering the symbols. Desi, in particular, was able to identify the name of the Elamite king Shelahakhi, who ruled around 1950 BCE, which allowed him to determine the phonetic value of many symbols and gradually reconstruct the principles of reading this writing system.
According to Desi, he adopted the same method used by Jean-François Champollion in the 19th century to decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. So far, he has been able to read 45 inscriptions, and he describes the next stage of his work as the study of Proto-Elamite, one of the oldest known writing systems in human history.
The city of Susa (also known as Shushan) is one of the oldest cities in human history and was the capital of the ancient Elamite civilization. Located in southwestern Iran, in Khuzestan province, more than 130 kilometers north of Ahvaz, between the Karkheh River to the west and the Dez River to the east, it played a pivotal role in the history of the region.
The city was founded around 4200 BC, making it one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. It has been known by several names throughout the ages; the Elamites called it "Shushan" or "Shushon," while it appears in Greek sources as "Sousa," and in the Hebrew Bible as "Shushan."
